Will Ferrell plays himself playing his Elf character. Ryan Reynolds plays himself because that’s his only skill. It’s a musical and the music is so forgettable, you won’t even remember how many songs there are. None of the leads are good singers so the songs are boring. The whole movie is too busy making jokes about itself to actually have any real momentum. There are exactly three jokes in the movie but you will get to hear them 5 or 6 times each. The dancing numbers are big and impressive but so weighed down by someone’s odd obsession with tap dancing that it almost feels like a clogging festival. Weirdly self-referential direction and writing and acting weighs down a well-trodden story before mediocre songs fatigue the viewer in the first act.